Splash's 1/48 Virgin HEMS Air Ambulance ***finished***

[splash]

[Dirkpitt289]

I have to admit I saved this on to my collection for a time when I have the skill set to do it.

[mattbacon]

That's fantastic, Splash. What a blast from the past! Where did you find it?

I commissioned that model back in '98, when I worked for Virgin Net, and I was in charge of building a web site for the Virgin HEMS service, which they'd taken over sponsorship of from the Daily Express. I was a regular lurker on the Paper Modelling mailing list at the time, and after seeing some of the promotional things that various big Japanese companies were offering, I thought (as a modeller myself) that it would be neat to have a paper model HEMS chopper for download from the site. I lucked in when I put out a call for volunteers to design it, and the splendidly named Dr Emil Zarkov, of Sofia, Bulgaria got in touch. He was a great guy -- Professor of Engineering in the School of Mines at the University IIRC -- and an expert paper modeller to boot, He'd developed his own software to create the paper model parts from a 3D model, so I sent him about 100 photos of the aircraft I took on the helipad, inside and out. He actually did two kits -- the full detail one that you have, and a very simplified, but still rather neat "blocky" one that kids could make up. Emil built up a prototype which was photographed in detail on the web site so you could see what you were trying to achieve. For the launch of the web site, we had half a dozen complete kits printed out properly at a Prontaprint on the corner of Soho Square (I'm sure it says this in the instructions somewhere, but it's best to print some of the sheets on thicker card stock, and some on thinner paper). I gave one of them to Richard Branson at the launch event (though I'm sure he never built it!) My proudest moment was going up to the ready room on the top of the Whitechapel hospital, and discovering one of the pilots and one of the on-call doctors (a dab hand with a scalpel!) putting the finishing touches to one they'd built together over the few days since the launch event...

Unfortunately, career-wise that's water well under the bridge, so I don't have the reference photos any more -- or the pioneering 3D virtual reality panoramas and 360 degree movies we did of the cockpit and interior ambulance cabin and walkaround of the aircraft on the pad... they were all hotlinked on the site as well, so you could pull up more information about controls and equipment, written by the pilot for the cockpit and the doctor/paramedic team for the cabin.

We had a bunch of "ride-along" movies filmed by the two interns from UCL who actually built the site as well. For the time, it was (though I say it myself) a pretty sate of the art "web-u-mentary" about the service.

Which is why I was wondering where you got it from, because I just assumed it had disappeared a couple of years later when the site got orphaned and eventually disappeared...

I hope you really enjoy building it!

bestest,
M.

[splash]

Matt you are now my hero.

I downloaded it from the original site years ago and attempted to build it all those years ago, but only built a couple of centre sections and unfortunately didn't follow the instructions as I should have and the build stalled and got lost over the years

If you search for the model, it is on several sites that I suspect have not asked permission

Regards Splash

PS: that was a brilliant website that you built and the model was a brilliant exercise in advertising.

[SJPONeill]

What a great story, Matt!!! It is indeed a pleasure to be modelling alongside someone who is actually responsible for the creation of these models...Paper is a great medium for promotional models and I am surprised that more organisations don't buy into it. Dr Zarkov is still designing paper models and has a new site here displaying his work: http://cadbest.com/store/en/;

[Molly-new]

Nice one Matt, very interesting. It is said that once something is on the web it is there forever, would it may be worth digging around for the original website?

[splash]

I have started to cut out the main parts so assembly should commence soon.

[splash]

Slight glitch so it's back to stage one, yesterday I baught a new printer and did a test print and found my original setup was set to fit to page 94% but having now set up my new printer to scale 100% I have now found the test scale that's printed on the model actually is to scale.

This has forced me to go for a full re-print

Regards Splash

[SJPONeill]

This has forced me to go for a full re-print

Not necessarily a bad thing, Splash, as chances are that any new parts you did on your new printer wouldn't be an exact colour match for those from the old one...

[splash]

First impressions of my new Epson L355 printer are good it comes with refillable ink tanks and four 70ml bottles of ink, these should last a long time as the normal ink cartridges you get with printers are between 5 and 15ml.

At £250 the printer was not cheap but the extremely low running cost should make it cheaper in the long run, a quick check on eBay finds a set of four non original 70ml inks are available for £5 inc postage this is enough for 2 years printing

[SJPONeill]

...or about a month for the paper modeller...

[splash]

At last I have made a start on the three centre sections.



Splash

[splash]

...or about a month for the paper modeller...

I'm starting to see what you mean

[splash]

The body is a very clever disign that slots together.

Here are the first two sections joined together.

[splash]